Hold Me Tight
by Blue Sailor
Summary: Set around 11.05 Thin Lizzie. Dean refuses to share a single bed at the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast, and Sam agrees to find a different motel. But that doesn't mean he's letting Dean off the hook. Fluff and cuddles. Gen, but can be read as pre-slash.


**A/N:** I cannot stop thinking about that single bed at the B&B, hence this fic. Pick your song reference for the title; I had the Beatles and Judy Garland simultaneously stuck in my head while writing.

* * *

It starts at the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast, of all places.

It's certainly not _Sam's_ fault. After all, requesting the victim's room is standard practice in haunted hotel cases, and Sam has lost count of the number of haunted hotels he and Dean have stayed in over the years, and they've never run into this particular problem before. So he feels justified in saying that there was no reason for him to think the dead couple's room would have only one bed.

Except for the fact that they were, well, a couple. He really can't explain his mental lapse on that one.

Truth be told, though, Sam isn't really complaining. He's a little disappointed that the supposed haunting is a hoax, (as they determine after less than an hour of poking around), but even if the ghosts are fake, the place is still Lizzie Borden's real house, and Sam doesn't much care what the sleeping arrangements are as long as he gets to keep the room.

Dean, however, drags him outside as soon as Sam agrees there's no haunting.

"Let's find another place to crash for the night, huh?" he says, glancing back over his shoulder at the house as they climb into the Impala. "I swear, if I have to look at one more lace doily I'm gonna throw up."

"No way!" says Sam indignantly. "I'm not giving up that room, and there's still a case here."

"Not our kind of case. And I'm not paying that tourist trap for another fake-haunted room."

"Fine, then you can sleep in the car."

"And freeze my ass off? No thanks."

"Then why can't we just—" Sam breaks off so suddenly he nearly chokes. He was, he realizes, just about to suggest that they _share,_ and, whoa, where did _that_ idea come from? They haven't shared a bed since they were kids, and even then Dean complained that Sam never kept to his side, but always migrated over to cling to his brother during the night. Sam can only imagine what Dean would have to say now about sharing the tiny bed at the B &B. The thought makes him cringe slightly.

Dean is watching him, eyebrows raised.

"Never mind," Sam mutters, his cheeks heating. "Let's go."

*S*P*N*

The idea refuses to leave him, though. He thinks about it all the way out of Massachusetts and into New York, where they stop to check out another haunting—a real one this time. Thankfully it's a straightforward salt-and-burn; Sam is too distracted for anything more complicated. If Dean notices his preoccupation, however, he doesn't say anything, and they retire to their (double-bedded) motel room in silence.

The thing is, as much as Sam hoped things would go back to normal once they finally got rid of the Mark of Cain, there are still times—far too frequent for Sam's liking—when Dean's eyes get that distant, walled-off look, and his voice goes hollow and empty, and he avoids Sam's gaze. Sam doesn't know what it means, but it makes his stomach twist with a sick combination of hurt and worry every time it happens. And the more he thinks about this strange distance between them, the more he craves some sort of closeness.

Which is why, a few days later, he hesitates when the bored-looking clerk at their latest motel glances up from his cell phone long enough to ask, "One king?"

They're in Ohio, and they've just finished up a nasty hunt involving a Jersey devil that had come unusually far west and upgraded from eating livestock to eating people. It was nearly four in the morning before they finally managed to corner and kill the damn thing, after chasing it around the dark, freezing woods for at least three hours. Maybe when they were younger, the cold and exertion wouldn't have taken as much of a toll, but as it is they're both completely exhausted by the time Dean pulls the Impala into the first motel parking lot they find along the highway and motions for Sam to go in and get a room, apparently too tired to do anything else.

Maybe even too tired to complain about sharing a bed, Sam realizes through the weary haze in his brain.

"One king?" the clerk asks again, more insistently.

"Uh," stutters Sam. Maybe it's just the exhaustion, but everything feels slightly surreal; he can't quite believe he's really about to do this. "Uh, yeah. Yes. One king, please."

The clerk slides the keys across the counter and goes back to his cell phone. Sam grabs them and hurries back outside. Dean is still in the Impala, his head tilted back against the seat and his eyes closed. Sam opens the driver's side door and shakes him awake, dangling the keys in front of his face.

"Got a room," he says, in a passable imitation of his normal voice. "You comin' inside or are you gonna sleep out here?"

Dean just blinks at him, looking too befuddled to have taken in a word, so Sam grabs the front of his jacket and hauls him out of the car, ignoring the unhappy groan this earns him.

Sam's hands are clumsy with fatigue, and it takes him a few tries to get the door of their room open, which gives him time to worry that the whole plan will blow up in his face, that Dean will take one look at the single bed and decide he'd rather sleep in the car after all. As it turns out, though, Dean doesn't even seem to notice. He just collapses onto the mattress, not bothering to remove his boots and jacket, his body immediately going slack. Sam has just enough energy left to kick off his own boots and throw his coat over the back of the chair before he follows suit, sinking down beside Dean without even attempting to pull back the covers.

He tries to keep himself awake for a few minutes, wanting to enjoy his success, but he can hear Dean's breathing much better than usual from this close at hand, and the steady rhythm of it lulls him to sleep almost instantly.

*S*P*N*

The first thing Sam becomes aware of when he wakes up is how very comfortable he is. He's warm, for one thing—which, since his stint in the Cage, he's always counted as a blessing. His head is resting on something solid, which he's pretty sure is Dean's shoulder. There's also the snug weight of an arm around his waist, but that slips off as soon as he notices it, and Dean shifts slightly, as though trying to get away. Eyes still closed, Sam makes a wordless noise of protest at the movement, his fingers clenching in Dean's shirt.

"Guess you must have been pretty tired last night, huh?" says Dean's voice from somewhere just above his head.

"Mmm?" Sam murmurs. He's still half-asleep, and far too content where he is to move.

"You only got us one bed, dumbass."

"Oh," says Sam, returning to full consciousness with an unpleasant jolt at Dean's sharp tone. "Yeah, I was...pretty tired."

Dean snorts. Sam quickly rolls off him, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and sitting up with his back towards him. The clock radio on the bedside table shows that it's barely past nine in the morning; he should feel exhausted still, considering how late they were up last night. But aside from a slight stiffness in his neck and back from the way he was folded up to fit against Dean's shoulder, he feels as though he's just had the best sleep of his life.

Sam considers this as they get ready to head out. It takes them much longer than usual, because they're both avoiding looking at each other, but judging by the few glances Sam manages to sneak at Dean's face, he looks well-rested, too—bright and rosy in a way Sam hasn't seen in far too long.

He also considers the fact that, despite his show of discomfort, Dean definitely had an arm around him, holding him close while he slept.

*S*P*N*

They keep heading west out of Ohio. There are no cases on their radar at the moment, so they just drive. It feels nice to be on the road like this, aimless, Sam thinks. They don't do this enough since they moved into the bunker, just driving, just the two of them and the car. Not that Sam minds the bunker; he's certainly settled in, even if it took him longer than Dean. But the bunker is full of big echoing hallways and cavernous rooms—too much empty space between them to get lost in, or to hide in. Here, in the car, they always fall automatically into their places, Sam shotgun, Dean driving, and it's easy, natural. Close.

Sam starts to wonder how far he can push his luck.

They're into Iowa, less than a day's drive to Lebanon, before Dean stops for the night. Sam offers to get the room. Dean casts him a suspicious glance, but lets him off in front of the lobby and goes to park the car. Even so, Sam can feel Dean's eyes on him in the rearview mirror, and he does his best to appear nonchalant as he walks inside.

There's a girl tapping away at the computer behind the desk. She looks up as Sam enters, and opens her mouth to say something, but Sam forestalls her.

"You got a room with one king left?"

The girl frowns at him, her eyes flicking to look out the window. There are only two other cars besides the Impala out there, and the motel quite clearly has rooms with any number and size of beds left.

"Just the one king left?" Sam asks again, nodding encouragingly.

"Um...sure," says the girl, obviously deciding it's best to humor him.

"Great. I'll take it."

Five minutes later, he's fighting to keep a straight face as Dean opens the door to their room and stops dead, staring at the single bed. After a moment, he turns back to look at Sam, stiff disapproval in every line of his body.

"Seriously?" he asks.

"This was the only room they had left," says Sam, with perfect composure.

Dean raises his eyebrows at the empty parking lot. "The only room they had left," he repeats.

"That's what the girl at the desk said," Sam tells him. Silently, he congratulates himself on the fact that he's not even lying.

"Did she," says Dean, his eyes narrowing.

Sam looks back at him, trying to make his own eyes wide and innocent. "Do you want to find another motel?" he asks. It comes out sounding more like a challenge than he intended, and his cheeks heat a little, but he doesn't drop his gaze.

Dean stares at him for a few more seconds, then turns abruptly and marches into the room, tossing his bag on the bed.

"Dibs on the first shower," he calls over his shoulder.

Sam follows him inside, letting his face break into a wide grin.

*S*P*N*

Sam pushes it a little further every time they head out on the road. After a while, he stops making up excuses for getting only one bed. Soon after that, he decides he's had enough of scrunching himself up to fit against Dean's shoulder, and starts gently nudging him onto his side so that he can stretch out, curling around his back. At first, Sam waits for Dean to fall asleep before performing this maneuver, sure that he would never consent to being the little spoon; but Dean never makes any move to pull away after they wake up, and sometimes, in those groggy moments after the alarm goes off but before they've dragged themselves out of bed, he even presses back—very slightly—into Sam's embrace. So Sam pushes a little more, and starts scooting up close while they're both still awake, pulling Dean firmly against his chest, nuzzling the back of his neck, wondering how much Dean will let him get away with, every moment expecting him to reach his limit, to shove Sam away and storm out to sleep in the Impala.

He's not sure what he's trying to achieve by doing this, since it's not as if he _wants_ to provoke Dean into leaving. It feels too nice to have Dean so close, to know that even when that distant look comes into his eyes, he's still right there for Sam to reach out and touch. Maybe he just wants acknowledgement, some sort of reassurance that Dean isn't going to give up or check out on him this time, that they're in it together now, united. That whatever Dean's thinking about when he's in that strange, faraway state isn't something that will end up tearing them apart again.

But no matter what he does, Dean never says a word.

*S*P*N*

It's starting to drive Sam crazy, this bed-sharing thing.

He's starting to think about it more and more; he keeps catching himself wanting contact with Dean even while they're not sleeping. It seems he can no longer sit across from Dean, in the library or in a diner booth or anywhere else, without having to restrain himself from stretching his legs out under the table to tangle their feet together. And whenever they watch TV in the little den they've made in one of the bunker's spare rooms, Sam has to squeeze into the farthest corner of the couch in order to prevent his body from gravitating towards Dean the way it wants to. The urge to touch him is so strong Sam can't even walk next to him comfortably; sitting in the Impala, with less than a foot of space between them, borders on physically painful.

Despite this, Sam prefers being on the road to retiring to separate beds while they're in the bunker. He always seems to fall asleep so much faster, and wake up feeling so much more rested, if Dean is there, safe and close and warm.

Sam thinks about asking Dean to share a bed in the bunker, too, but he can't be certain of Dean's reaction. He might allow the king-sized beds on the road, but he's clearly determined not to talk about it, and Sam finds that his daring doesn't extend to actually attempting a conversation. Besides, they've been going out on a case every few days lately, never spending more than a week or so at the bunker, and Sam tells himself he can go that long without the bed-sharing.

*S*P*N*

Then they hit a dry spell. No hunts. Sam scours the news every day for hints of a case, but there's nothing. No spirits, no monsters, not even a crossroads demon or rogue angel. He can't even find anything suspicious enough that he could pretend it was a case, just to get them back on the road.

They've been stagnating for nearly two weeks. Sam has already gotten bored with Netflix. He's gone through the entire archive and reorganized his card catalog twice; he's even looked over Dean's inventory of supernatural objects, and debated how offended Dean would be if he took it upon himself to reorganize that, too. For his part, Dean spends all his time down in the garage, tinkering with the cars and building some strange contraption out of spare parts.

Sam thinks they might be avoiding each other. There's certainly a weird, awkward sort of tension between them whenever they're in the same room. It's with some trepidation, therefore, that he hears Dean's footsteps entering the library.

"Hey," says Dean, walking over to lean on the table where Sam is set up with his laptop, notebook, and a bottle of beer, scrolling idly through a website on UFO sightings.

"Hey," Sam answers, hastily minimizing the window—for some reason, he doesn't want Dean to know just how desperate he is for a case. His fingers itch to wrap themselves around Dean's wrist, so he grabs his beer bottle off the table and clenches them around that instead.

"You're gonna go blind staring at that thing," Dean tells him, nodding at the laptop. "How long you been sitting here?"

Sam checks his watch, and is startled to see how late it is. He shrugs, as casually as he can manage. "A while."

"Hm," says Dean, apparently not fooled. "Well, I'm hittin' the hay."

But he doesn't leave. He just stands there, watching Sam expectantly, as though awaiting a response.

"Uh...okay?" says Sam, at a loss. "I'm gonna just...stay here for a bit."

A strange expression crosses Dean's face, but it's gone before Sam can identify it, and then Dean is pushing away from the table, heading towards the bedrooms. He glances back only briefly to flash Sam his most annoying smirk.

"Yeah, that UFO scene's just riveting, huh?"

"Shut up," Sam mutters, turning back to his laptop.

He waits until he hears the distant sound of Dean's bedroom door closing, and then reopens his browser, although the image of Dean's face is so strong in his mind it seems to be blocking out the screen. He has a feeling that Dean was just trying to tell him something important, and that he missed it, but he has no clue what it might have been.

He stays there, staring at his laptop, even though his eyes feel heavy-lidded and sore. Maybe if he stays up very late, he thinks, he won't have so much trouble falling asleep when he finally goes to bed.

A couple of hours later, though, Sam concedes defeat, punching his pillow savagely in a fruitless attempt to make it more comfortable. He's piled every spare blanket he can find onto the bed, and he's plenty warm enough, but the blankets can't replace the solid weight of Dean in his arms, and the room is too quiet. Sam tried playing white noise over his phone, but it was too monotonous, and didn't lull him the way the rise and fall of Dean's breathing always does.

His musings are interrupted by a soft creak. Raising his head slightly, Sam looks around the room, wondering what could have made the sound.

Another creak, louder. This time, Sam sees the door swinging open, letting in a thin gleam of light from the hallway.

Holding his breath, Sam reaches for the gun on his bedside table, clicks off the safety and aims it directly at the door. A head pokes into the gap, and Sam's hand tenses on the gun. A split second later, though, he recognizes the spiky, sleep-mussed hair.

" _Dean,_ " he says, lowering the gun and letting out his breath in a relieved whoosh.

Dean freezes, and then he pushes the door all the way open, looking embarrassed. "Sorry," he says. "Didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't wake me," sighs Sam. He replaces the gun on his bedside table, then falls back onto his pillows, rubbing a hand over his face. He _wishes_ Dean had woken him up, because that would mean he'd been soundly asleep, instead of grappling with this ridiculous dependence on a big-brother-shaped security blanket.

"Can't sleep?" Dean asks. His tone is odd, Sam thinks. It's almost _hopeful._

"No," he answers.

"Yeah?" Dean shuffles his feet a bit, drops his eyes to the floor. "Me neither."

Sam sits up again, suddenly alert. There's something going on here, he's certain, something important. Something related to whatever Dean was trying to communicate in the library—

"Sam…." Dean pauses, licking his lips, visibly steeling himself. "Can I—? I mean, could we—?"

A sudden warmth that has nothing to do with his many blankets flares somewhere deep in Sam's chest, and he has to fight down a swell of giddy laughter. "Share?" he supplies tentatively, when he has himself under control.

Dean nods, without lifting his eyes from the floor. Sam immediately starts shoving blankets off the bed.

"What are you doing?" Dean asks.

"Gonna be too hot for these with both of us in here," Sam explains.

He keeps his tone as neutral as possible, although it still comes out a little strained. It's costing him a lot of effort not to stretch out his arms and beg for Dean to join him, but he manages it—at least until Dean closes the door and crosses the room, and Sam feels one side of the bed dip slightly. Then he lunges over, seizes Dean around the waist, and yanks him down, trying to pull him back against his chest. To his surprise, though, Dean squirms out of his grip. He backs off, confused and a little hurt, but Dean just turns so that they're facing each other and then presses in close, shoving one ankle between Sam's and throwing an arm over him.

"This mattress feels like it's been here since 1958," Dean complains as he settles.

Sam's mind is so suffused with contentment and closeness and _Dean_ , it takes him a moment to answer. "It probably has," he agrees finally.

Dean huffs, unimpressed. "Well, tomorrow we're going back to my room."

"Tomorrow?" Sam echoes.

"Honestly, you should probably just get rid of this mattress," Dean continues. "I'm telling you, once you try my memory foam, you won't ever want to leave."

Sam tightens his arms around his brother. "I'm sure I won't."

Dean ducks his head a little to press his nose into the soft spot just above Sam's collarbone. "I'm blaming you for this, just so you know," he mumbles after a moment.

"Hey," Sam protests. "Totally _not_ my fault."

Or at least, it's not _just_ his fault. Sam shifts a little closer to Dean, smiling slightly as he finally starts to drift off. No, the blame for this one is definitely shared.


End file.
